Curiouser and Curiouser!

Google lets me down again

Sun, 01 Nov 2009 13:19:53 +0000

So it appears that the Google Apps for Domains I use for my domain 'mattmower.com' is broken. Although I can login to the admin interface any attempt to access the inbox reports a 502 "temporary server error". Googles definition of "temporary" is a bit loose since this has been going on for at least 24 hours now.

It's not bouncing mail so I've some hope it's not entirely lost but it's also not delivering it so I've no real idea. Maybe it's just being forwarded to the great /dev/null in the sky. I had some important ongoing email conversations which have now abruptly stopped and I've no idea if there were responses. That makes me super happy.

Google's idea of help is a useless FAQ backed up by a confusing morass of "themed" forums. The forum names are something of a misnomer though as they should, more properly, be the circles of hell that they are.

I'm quite angry but mostly with myself for trusting something so important to me as my email to a company like Google. Why did I do this? Because Google Apps for Domains is available for free and is pretty convenient. This turns out to be a big mistake.

I suppose it's unfair to complain about the support for a free product. But if I don't expect to be able to get direct support what is also missing are tools to report a problem so that you actually know that there is acknowledgement that there is a problem.

For example I am getting 502 server errors. It would be nice to report it and know that google know they are getting 502 server errors and that this would be dealt with. For a free product that would be enough. Posting about it on a forum with no idea if anyone from Google will ever actually read the message is not. That fits my definition of a shitty service.

I could, I suppose, upgrade to the $50/user "enterprise" edition of GAfD but I've little confidence in Google right now or the idea that it would be $50 well spent. I'm more inclined to sever all my dependencies on Google. They're not a company I like or wish to rely on. Lesson learned.

My options appear to be to look for a mail hosting company who specialise in small business (I'm not but that most closely fits my requirements and spending power) or start hosting my email myself. The latter I am loathe to do because I know that road contains more potential heartache than where I am now.

What a crock of shit.

One Logic crash too many

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:07:07 +0000

File this one under "I was tired" or "I am an asshole" but this is the crash report I just sent to Apple.

you know i bought Logic because I wanted to be creative, i wanted to make music.

This app crashes SO FUCKING MUCH it's almost unbearable.

I opened Logic, I added an instrument, I selected Kore2 Stereo, I got to audition one patch and then the plugin window disappeared and Logic was beachballed never to return.

I mean yes, I can crash other apps, but I have never come across a single app that has given me more trouble than Logic.

When you released 9.0 and 10.6 I thought "At least, they will have been designed to work well together" and finally Logic might actually, you know, work for an hour or two.

If anything I have had a worse time with Logic 9 and 10.6 than I did with Logic 8 on 10.5. More "System overload" messages when my CPU's are idle, more "Disk too slow" messages, more "Cannot sync MIDI and audio" and all the rest of the bullshit that seems to be Logic's stock-in-trade now.

Yes this is a rant, yes it's unfair, I am sure plenty of people have no trouble with Logic.

But you know, I wanted to make music and instead I am writing another in what seems to have been a long series of crash reports.

Here's hoping for Logic 10 on 10.7.

Good night.

Love Spectrasonics

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 11:43:09 +0100

I'd written to the Spectrasonics yahoo a little over a week ago about a problem I was having with automation of Stylus RMX in Logic. It turned out to be related to an underlying problem with Logic that Spectrasonics were aware of and Apple had fixed in Logic 9.

Yesterday Spectrasonics released the first 64-bit Mac compatible version of Stylus RMX along with a bunch of fixes including the fix for Logic automation. As a free update.

Gotta say that I really love the way Spectrasonics work. They make great products (Omnisphere and Stylus RMX are my go-to tools) and they keep them updated, and fix things.

This is my major complaint with so many companies. It's not enough to keep releasing new stuff you gotta go back fix the problems too!

Kudos to Spectrasonics for their attitude.

On file sharing

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 12:33:14 +0100

Opinions in the music industry appear to be divided over the draconian new rules regarding file sharing that our dimwit, Stalinist, labour government want to hang us with. I just read this piece in the Guardian online and thought a quote by, I think, Dave Gilmour is interesting:

"If an artist wants to give away their music, that's up to them. It shouldn't be up to pirates," he says. "A download costs 79p. Could you name me something that you could buy that would last you forever and give you pleasure for 79p? This is not a lot for people to ask for."

I totally agree but, at the same time, I think the law and potential redress should acknowledge that we are talking about things worth £0.79

Reaktor 5 problematic with Snow Leopard

Sat, 05 Sep 2009 20:58:54 +0100

Today I updated my main music making Mac to OSX 10.6 Snow Leopard. I'd been intending to wait for 10.6.1 but I got seduced and.. well I'm weak.

So far SL has been good and I've had no real problems. Logic 9.0 is running fine, most of my instruments seem okay however notable during the forced rescan were two auvaltool crashes on Reaktor 5 and Reaktor 5 FX.

Here's a summary of the damage:

Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS)
Exception Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE at 0x0000000000000008
Crashed Thread:  0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread

Thread 0 Crashed:  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   Reaktor5.MusicDevice.component  0x119a8b17 NIAudioUnitMusicEffectEntry + 247
1   ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore  0x90b67cb6 CallComponentDispatch + 29
2   ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore  0x90b67c97 CallComponentOpen + 43
3   ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore  0x90b65f80 OpenAComponent + 433
4   ...apple.audio.units.AudioUnit  0x90347494 AudioComponentInstanceNew + 51
5   auvaltool                       0x00012b9e 0x1000 + 72606
6   auvaltool                       0x0001097b 0x1000 + 63867
7   auvaltool                       0x0001143f 0x1000 + 66623
8   auvaltool                       0x00006ad0 0x1000 + 23248
9   auvaltool                       0x00006ef9 0x1000 + 24313
10  auvaltool                       0x0000f2dd 0x1000 + 58077
11  auvaltool                       0x00002df4 0x1000 + 7668
12  auvaltool                       0x0000351b 0x1000 + 9499
13  auvaltool                       0x00002139 0x1000 + 4409

I have a ticket filed with NI support and it will be interesting to see how long it takes them to respond. I've also opened up a thread on the Reaktor technical issues forum. Please post if you have anything to add.

Elysium journey

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 10:35:12 +0100

Recently I have been running the final stages of beta-testing of Elysium, my harmonic table based generative MIDI sequencer (what a mouthful!), and it's in pretty good shape. I'm especially grateful to Seth Elgart](http://boxoftextures.blogspot.com/) who has lead the final charge and, largely due to his efforts, a huge number of fit & finish issues have been cleaned up that make the out-of-the-box experience much better (especially the new-user experience).

I released Elysium 0.9 as an open source application under the MIT license on the 1st January this year. But I'd been working on it for some time prior to that and I realized, yesterday, that I broke ground on the application on 20th July 2008 which means that, on Monday, it will have been exactly on year since I started the application that kicked off my musical journey.

The stars will not quite align right to let me release 1.0 on Monday because there is still a lot to do: clean up a couple of things (which I am getting some help with) about the look of the app, create some demo patterns, update the documentation, make an intro video, and update the website.

This application has really meant a lot to me because it's opened an entirely new, enjoyable, side of my life. Whatever the version number (currently 1.0RC6) I'll be celebrating it's birthday on Monday.

Never trust a social media consultant!

Tue, 07 Jul 2009 10:20:31 +0100

I was just catching up on Giles Bowkett's blog and I noticed a recent post in which he talks about his qualifications to be a social media consultant. He leads off with a google search for "Giles" where his blog appears as the 7th result overall and 5th if you don't count video. That's pretty amazing, to be on the first page of Google results for your first name.

So I thought to myself "I can play that game" and searched for 'matt'. Now my history with the Google search results is not uncheckered. For a long time my blog languished ~150th place when you searched for my full name! So you can imagine my surprise when I saw the following:

I'm in 6th place overall but, if you don't count news and video results, I'm just one place off the medals in 4th! And that's up against much stiffer competition: 15,000,000 search hits for 'giles' vs. a whopping 157,000,000 for 'matt'!

Clearly I am a social media force to be reckoned with!

"It always looks darkest just before it gets totally black."

Sun, 28 Jun 2009 17:49:55 +0100

A quote by Charlie Brown that leapt out at me as a neat segue into my topic which is that I just passed my 3rd Kyu grading in Shotokan and earned my brown belt.

When I started I found it hard to imagine I'd ever make it to green or purple. I think I'm beyond that kind of thinking now, even about the black belt. The combinations get harder, you're expected to show more spirit, but this seems to be largely a matter of determination and practice. I enjoy karate and, within the constraints of my body, I want to do it.

Once again I single out my instructor, Sensei Richard Hughes of TVSK, to thank him for his patient tutelage and for running friendly, and convenient, clubs.

Congratulations to everyone else who passed too :) We all worked pretty hard on the day and man was it hot!

Now I start learning Bassai Dai which, despite looking harder, I cannot imagine enjoying less than Tekki Shodan.

Onwards and upwards!

Old Joe Clarke can rest easy

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:41:22 +0100

I thought it was worth documenting here that, last week, I passed the beginners piano course I started back in January. When I say passed I mean my teacher said "okay, you're done with this stuff" as this wasn't a formal, exams, type of course. Simply that I played the last piece of the course he uses, called 'Old Joe Clarkes Boogie', to his satisfaction.

The last 5-6 months have been quite an awakening for me. Despite a love of music I have never seen myself as being musical. And it's not like I'm claiming any special gift now but I have at least discovered that I have some talent. That, as hard as it seems to me right now, I can play the piano and have it sound more or less like you'd imagine. That is quite the big thing for me.

It's getting towards a year since I first started to dabble with the idea of making music. Since I saw the reacTogon video that kicked all this off for me.

In that time I've:

made headway learning the piano with the expectation of much better progress in the year ahead
started learning to read music and understand the processes of composition and arrangement
made lots of progress in production techniques using Logic Pro
creating a a couple of dark ambient tracks I am quite proud of, e.g. Never Tell
built and released one open source sequencer, Elysium, and started on a second that I hope to release this year

I've no specific goals in mind for where I am going with all this. I'm just trying to enjoy the journey as much as possible right now. But I maybe do look forward to a time when I don't have to pass by the baby grand in the foyer of that swank hotel but, instead, can sit down and entertain my fellow guests with a little Satie.

ActiveRecord PassportControl plugin

Thu, 18 Jun 2009 08:55:52 +0100

One of the things that irritates me from time to time about testing Rails code is when you can't easily mock the object you want. It usually comes up in a controller test where you create an AR instance in your setup but, because you pass it by id into the controller, the controller retrieves a difference instance of the record.

You can solve this by mocking the AR model class but this can get messy. What I really wanted was a way to mock a record rather than an instance so I whipped up the Passport Control plugin. This lets me write:

setup do
  @user = User.make
  @content = @user.contents.make
  @content.at_passport_control { |content| mock( content ).foo { "foo!" }
  get :show, :id => @content.id
end

The call to at_passport_control ensures that whenever this record (as identified by it's id) is instantiated by ActiveRecord, by whatever chain of invocations, that it will have it's #foo method mocked.

Comes with a Test::Unit adapater and seems to work well for me. Hope you find Passport Control useful too.